Sizzling Ideas for Summer Marketing
 By Terry M. Blair

During the lazy, hazy days of summer, things slow down for many businesses as customers and prospects often go happily off on holidays and vacations.

This presents an opportunity for savvy business owners to take the offensive and ramp up marketing efforts while their competitors are taking a siesta. Consider these sizzling summertime marketing ideas.

Plan a fun outdoor event
Summer offers a great opportunity for you to spend some quality time in a relaxed, non-business atmosphere with your best clients and prospects.

Use your imagination by trying out one of these ideas:

• A lunchtime picnic
• Daytime or nighttime baseball game
• A concert or movie in the park
• A trip to the zoo for animal lovers or a stroll through a museum for art lovers

Sponsor a summer festival
Many different festivals and celebrations take place in most communities all summer long. Most offer great sponsorship opportunities for local small businesses.

Set up a booth. Have plenty of coupons, samples, flyers and promotional items ready to give away while you’re there.

Distribute summer-themed promotional items
Things like beach towels, baseball caps, tote bags and water bottles can be emblazoned with your company name and logo. They’re always in high demand during the summer months. Hand them out freely to customers.

AFS Members can get special deals on summer promotional items from Burns Graphics. Enjoy a 10- to 20-percent discount on promotional products such as clothing, cups and more.

Give tickets to summertime events and attractions
These might include blockbuster movies, concerts on the lawn, major or minor league baseball games, water parks and theme parks, zoos and museums.

Need discount tickets for fun events? Turn to AFS. Members can get discounts on:

• Movie tickets for major theaters
• Amusement parks across the country
• Green fees and golf accessories at more than 1,500 golf courses throughout the nation

Through your AFS Working Advantage benefit, you can even save up to 60 percent on Broadway theater shows, sporting events and more!

Use marketing time wisely
If business is a little slow, use this downtime to plan and implement marketing strategies for the rest of the year.

In particular, look for cost-saving strategies. For example:

• Use social media. If you aren’t using social media to market your business, you’ll soon be at a strategic disadvantage. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ning—they all offer unique opportunities to connect with your customers and prospects (especially younger ones) in new and different ways.

• Maximize your e-marketing efforts. Blogging and e-newsletter publishing have become common and inexpensive marketing tools. When done well, they can help your small business compete on a more level playing field with larger competitors. Content can be repurposed across various electronic media—your Web site, blog, e-newsletter, and Facebook and LinkedIn pages, for example—for maximum efficiency.

• Take a fresh look at advertising and PR. One benefit of the economic downturn is that advertising rates have fallen in certain kinds of media. And there are many free or low-cost things you can do to promote your business. Try these ideas: writing and placing articles in local and trade publications; distributing press releases that announce new developments at your company; getting your small business listed with an online review site such as Yelp.com.

Benefit availability dependent upon membership level and state of residence and is subject to change.


(Posted July 2009)

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